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No Java Store outside US till next year - Update

As promised by its CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun Microsystems has announced the Java Store at JavaOne 2009. The service, previously code-named Project Vector, is billed as a "consumer-facing store front enabling the discovery and purchase of Java and JavaFX applications". The service as launched at the developer conference is currently in private beta and is only available to US developers. According to a FAQ on the store, there are no plans to expand the Java Store outside the US before 2010.

Sun also launched the Java Warehouse which acts as a clearing house for application submissions to the Java Store. The Warehouse includes guidelines for developers on how to submit their applications and minimum requirements for the code, such as signing with a trusted certificate authority only and not replicating the functionality of the Java Store itself. Again, the Warehouse is only available to US developers.

During the beta period, all applications on the Java Store will be free. This may well be because at the moment the Warehouse has no support for pricing, although it is promised for a future release. Sun has high hopes for the Java Store, expecting it to deliver applications safely and securely to "more than 800 million desktop Java users".

Update - Jeet Kaul, Vice President of Sun's Client Software Group, has estimated that the Java Store could be open in Europe in "about three or four months". The comment was made in an video interview with Sun's Simon Phipps.